This is the authors version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source:

Brott, Simone (2001) Abstracting Mies : Fritz Neumeyers "The Artless

Word": Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art. In Zimmerman, Claire
(Ed.) Roundtable : Mies and Reactionary Modernism, November 2001,
New Haven, Connecticut. (Unpublished)
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c Copyright 2001 Please consult the author

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Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art

Simone Brott

Presentation November 2001

Introduction
The subject of this discussion is Fritz Neumeyers The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the
Building Art, published in Germany in 1986 and issued by MIT in 91. This is an important text
which traces the philosophical sources and underpinnings of Miess architectural thinking and
work. In Stanley Allens Review of the Artless Word he claims that Neumeyers achievement is to
overturn the general opinion of Mies as a man of few words specifically the misconception that
Mies was dismissive of the written word and disengaged from philosophical thinking, and
committed to the truth that emanated from the things themselves. The Artless Word he says
portrays Mies as deeply engaged in philosophical matters and more importantly shows the
development of Miess thinking s as the direct outgrowth of deeply felt philosophical reflections.
In spite of this, Allen criticises Neumeyer for taking Miess writing both unreflectively and too
literally. The first thing one notices in the Artless Word, is a marked lack of skepticism in
Neumeyers rendition.
My overall opinion of the book is that Neumeyers detailed account of all the people Mies was
affiliated with, the people he worked with and was influenced by, the books Mies read - not to
mention underlined and annotated - is so rigorous and involved that it avoids the kind of reflection
and problem that is implied by such a speculative subject matter viz. Architectures relationship to
Philosophy. Neumeyer aligns himself with the metaphysical idealism that he finds in Mies and this
becomes more and more evident as the account develops culminating in an extended elaboration of
Guardinis philosophy and influence on Mies. Here Neumeyer appears not to be speaking so much
about Mies as to be praising Guardinis religious convictions which he then uses to think about the
spiritualism of the Farnsworth House. When I started reading the artless word I thought Neumeyer
had no opinions at all and by the end I found his theological-philosophical agenda completely
overwhelming. The second problem which is related to the first is Neumeyers nostalgia towards
Mies that does not allow the author to go far enough in thinking about the problems of Miess
metaphysics of Architecture (as I will call it) For example he says
[Miess] laconic sentence that accompanied the Concrete Residential Building is hard to excel in its
renunciation of aesthetic design criteria: I cut openings into the walls where I need them for view and
illumination. In contrast to this pragmatic realism, Le Corbusiers lyrical interpretation of openings-[and he
quotes] The holes give much or little light, make gay or sad seems hopelessly sentimental. [italics mine]
Apparently here too Berlages rigor had served as example: The actual decoration of the walls is the
windows, declared Berlage, adding at once, one must of course only install them where needed.

It is this kind of narrating that makes me wonder whether Neumeyer misses the essential nostalgia
in Mies or whether it is Neumeyer who frames Mies in a kind of nostalgia (in this instance through
the contrast with LC). Whose nostalgia is being covered over? The accusation of sentimentality is
always underlined by its own nostalgia for an idealised state of authenticity free of value. This is
where we should be careful not to impose nostalgia on Mies. The flip side of the coin is there is a
certain nostalgia in these statements which lies in the mere fact of stating something like the
decoration of the walls is the windows. The ingenuousness is revealed in the hasty caveat which

follows, one must of course only install them where needed. Miess statement is more opaque, he
gives less away but if the architecture is an instantiation of a perfected state of being then the need
for speaking itself needs to be challenged. Neumeyer does acknowledge this problem of the relation
of Miess architecture and writing when he says that what is interesting is the idea that the truth
had to unfold without mediation and yet words were required to mediate between architecture and
the truth about world. However, this is as far as he goes.
That being said I think it is less useful to criticise Neumeyer for having not gone far enough in his
project than it does to use these blind spots in the Artless Word as a way to begin an analysis of
what is seemingly deficient in Mies (himself). So the intention is to use Neumeyer as a ground for
discussing those aspects of Mies's philosophy that are complicated and difficult to resolve. I will try
and raise some of the difficulties in Mies's statements that arise through reading Neumeyer (both
what is difficult in Mies and Neumeyer. Rather than cover the whole book I adumbrate the first
major shift in Miess thinking as given in the Artless Word, so the first section of this paper
discusses roughly the years up to 1924 and the second the years that follow between 1924-27.
Please refer to the rough sketch of these periods in the handout. The left hand items are the thinkers
that were influencing Mies at the time according to Neumeyer. The second handout I try to draw
out the salient lines from the appendix where Miess writings, lectures and publications appear in
Neumeyer.

Neumeyers account: Miess Position

Up to 1924
Architectural
Form-giving anti-formalism
form is result of construction
Intrinsic form anti-aesthetics
Berlage
not Behrens
Philosophical
Essentialism
Berlage
not Behrens
Hegel
not Nietzsche
Raoul Franc
not will to power
not zeitgeist

form as goal is formalism

Construction vs Meaning
Simplicity vs Complexity
form-finding vs form creating

will-to-form is also formalism

but will to discipline the will
but zeitwille

1924-1927
Architectural
Shift away from

form as structure to form as plant

Philosophical
materialisticto idealisticPositivistic
aesthetic
Technology
to Nature
Rudolf Schwarz + Nietzsche
Spirit not abstraction
Franc
Siegfried Ebeling Der Raum als Membran (space as membrane, 1926)
Theories of biological architecture
Shift away from

Background
I
Up to 1924
Miess concept of form-giving
In the beginning of the twenties, Mies was obsessed by the idea of form-giving. Art no longer has
an imitative role in society but a formative one. Form is not the representation of reality but the
production of. Miess key statement for this time is Form as goal is formalism; and that we reject.
Mies positioned himself alongside Berlage who argued against creating form, instead advocating
form-finding. Mies identified with Berlages search for truth, based on the Hegelian model of art
grounded in truth. Berlages influence led to an anti-aesthetics, the pursuit of the fundamental, the
essential.
At the same time, Behrens was advocating the aesthetic position, an aesthetics based on a hybrid of
classical forms and modern industrialisation. He said, just as there are physical laws, there are also
artistic laws. Behrens was interested in the image, in art as poetic metaphor or in Nietzsches
words it creates reality once more, only selected, strengthened, and corrected. So from
Nietzsches Reason in Philosophy in Twilight of the Idols Behrens philosophy was that the world
is not grounded in an ultimate truth that needs to be discovered but is something that we interpret.
Neumeyer characterises Berlages philosophy as metaphysical Idealism (Wesenphilosophie)
traditional belief in a metaphysically guaranteed wholeness based on Hegel and Schopenhauer
versus Behrens Nietzschean autonomous, rational individual that insists on imparting meaning to
its own existence. Mies aligned himself with Berlage and Hegelianism. Behrens spoke about the
new art by introducing the ideas of various Art Historians such as Wllflin and Alois Riegl e.g.
Riegls Kunstwollen or will to art which was also rejected by Mies. What is essential about form
is only arrived at through the correct means, however Will to Form is formalism, form must show
itself through itself in itself and of itself and not be determined in advance. Mies argues even will
to style is formalism.
After going through this basic conflict within the new art theory as represented by Behrens and
Berlage, Neumeyer proceeds to locate Miess philosophical position in two aspects (1) Mies is a
Platonist both in his commitment to only that which is essential, coupled with his belief that only
questions into the essence of things are meaningful. Thus, The inquiry into the building art is
itself an inquiry into the intrinsic. Form is secondary to construction. In spite of this Neumeyer
reads in Miess philosophy a conflict between materialistic-metaphysical philosophy (the things
themselves, a kind of phenomenology) and idealistic rationalism (the ideal form). Neumeyer
concludes by saying that Mies was not just conflicted about his philosophical position but that this
carried through into his aesthetic position.
even if Mies in the early 20s rejected all will to form as academic and speculative, his thought and statements
remained ambivalent. In spite of the rhetorical impetus of denial, the executing impulses insisted on perfect
form-giving and appearance and thence on the rights of art. The unequivocal commitment to construction may
have put the question of meaning into the background but it did not answer it. Thus the imaginary dialogue
between two worlds, encountered by Mies at the beginning of his career, continued. They challenged him to
press for the simplest common denominator on the one hand, while on the other to strive for richness

I would like to use this background to start to speak about some of the problems that arise in the
text. (1) Mies and Form (2) Mies and Philosophy and (3) Mies and Abstraction which will be the
subject of my paper. The intention is to use what is problematic in Neumeyer as a way of raising
what is problematic in Miess thinking itself and so Im going to swing between talking about
Neumeyer and Mies which may confuse.
(1) Mies conception of Form
Mies and Form striving for a negative idea of form, content over form as form itself.
What comes out of this discussion about Miess conception of Form is the question about what
Mies is in pursuit of. If he claims that form is not the object, but construction or what he calls
means then why are we left wondering what is in deficit. It isnt as if Mies has answered his own
question with the solution provided. Another way of looking at it is Mies claims that form is not
what he is looking for and yet his polemic amounts to a theory of form, a negative not-form. It is a
strange disavowal of form. Form unfolds as the truth of construction or building process. But it
isnt the process that is in question but form itself. The process does not require formulation, it is
self-given. He claims that the means are what count and yet it is the conception of form that is
denied. So Form as the covert object of pursuit, lurks behind Miess polemic. What Mies is
constructing is in fact a negative idea of form, a form that withdraws from itself. This idea of
absence and the negative is pursued in Del Co which Im sure youve all read for today. I would
like to pursue this idea of negative form in my paper in an attempt to locate Mies in a contemporary
discourse on abstraction.
But Miess negative concept of form, form as absence is not an empty set. The reason form does
not need to be invented aside from it being the result of construction, is that the essential form [and
I quote Mies] is already present residing as a perpetual energy at the core of things, it need
only be expressed by a contemporary consciousnesssomething that always has been and always
should be. So the absence of form, Mies fills with the idea of spirit. [Hegel] Neumeyer adds The
redemption of the absolute and the timeless was furnished by the philosophical method of
abstraction [do not read this: What does abstraction mean but the removal from materiality, a kind of translation
into an idea, into spirit?]

How can Neumeyer speak of redemption and the absolute in a single utterance? The absolute and
timeless by definition cannot be buried or perverted as the phrase redemption implies. The absolute
is safe from such contingency. But this merely gives us a glimpse into the strangeness of Miess
project: an attempt to recover an absolute which has lost its ground. (and this was typical in Germany at
the time do not read this, but relate to Heideggers Way into the Ground of Metaphysics and the groundless
grounding) Yet this project has a certain philosophical sophistication: the searching for the

groundless ground, [formless form] one which is in a state of self withdrawnness, could be
compared to Derridas differance. And yet we need to question, was this the project? [do not read - To
find the groundless ground in the same way that Heidegger speaks of the silent refusal of Being in his later work].

So the claim is that the absolute is an ephemeral leveling out concept, an abstraction that Mies
wished to embody in form and yet by definition the absolute is beyond contingency or
ephemerality.

The third thing to mention is Miess idea of the absolute is complicated by being linked to a
definite historical moment. For Mies, the absolute was only properly expressed in early Greek
architecture. Neumeyer says: Thus Mies in an archaising act of abstraction, bent the bow
backward toward fictive origins where the forms, as it were, took their beginning: building
gropes to regain a lost condition of primordial innocence. [do not read - A strange statement but we can
compare to Heideggers idealising of early Greek Philosophy and striving to return to this truer and more correct
moment in philosophy after which it degenerated.] So the absolute is contained in the true origin of

architecture but the conception of beginning is absolute truth which is innocent and corruptible.
So Miess conception of form can be problematised in the formulation: form as absence which
takes form with a timeless and absolute spirit. [Need to reference Hegels lectures on Aesthetics]
Which brings us to the second problem,
(2) Mies and Philosophy
Neumeyer describes Miess aim as metaphysical.
That the conflation of architecture with Philosophy in the Artless Word remains unproblematised is
so obvious as to not inspire criticism but it can be used as a starting point for thinking about how
Mies operates conceptually, inside two discourses. Architecture within its discoursing about itself
develops its own metaphysics of itself of its own Being if we can call it that. In Neumeyer there is a
seemingly unintentional conflation between what I call a metaphysics of architecture and
Metaphysics proper. For instance he says the representatives of the new art called for an art in tune
with universal laws. The other problem is that these philosophers all write about Art, Heidegger,
Hegel, Nietzsche as well as producing their own Metaphysics. The relationship between the
metaphysics and the theories on Art is not clear cut and I can only speak about this matter in the
most general of ways here. And architectural discourse has produced its own confused
metaphysics, instead of Being there is form, space or sometimes surface. When we speak of
architectures identity or autonomy it gains a being on another level. Miess search for the true
Being of Architecture if we can say that is what he was doing is his own architecture philosophy
which ultimately needs to be understood as a system separate belonging to Mies and not to
philosophy. Neumeyer continually refers to Mies as Hegelian or Neo-Platonic and yet his
conception of form as absence is more Heideggerian in its mode of thinking. And Mies professing
that you cant say anything about this, his disavowal of the text is also Heideggerian, the disavowal
that language is not capable of expressing... Doesnt the modern stance privilege logos, [thinking]
over Being?, a platonic stance that Mies is certainly skeptical of. If we read in between Hegel and
Guardini in Miess statements something different emerges.
[Maybe dont do this bit on truth]
Neumeyer gives an account of Miess conception of truth, [a good exercise if you think Mies is a
metaphysician] The Miesian order of thinking followed this maxim, wanting to reconcile the
essential and the existential, the eternal being and the present in a truth relationship. And Mies
subscribes to Thomas Aquinas: truth as adequatio intellectus et rei which means the adequation or
correspondence of idea and thing and is known as the correspondence theory of truth. So we say
something is true when we discover that a statement corresponds to or is in agreement with the
matter or state of affairs it is about.

Notwithstanding, Aquinass formulation adequatio intellectus et rei, doesnt really seem to be what
Mies is after at all. In fact this seems to be a fairly contingent notion of truth. Mies actually
subscribes to the idea of truth as that which shows itself in itself and of itself, which is closer to
Heideggers idea of truth as showing or disclosedness. The material disclosing itself in how and
what it should be, the form in turn disclosing itself as derived from some higher process. For
Heidegger, the correspondence theory of truth is not incorrect but a derivative form of truth
grounded in truth as disclosedness. Isnt this closer to how Mies sees the relation between form and
its revealing itself through construction? Form is derivative. Mies is more a radical
phenomenologist than he is a neo-Platonist but these categories are of no interest, we need to
discover what is Miess philosophy. Miess search for the truth of form entails looking for the kind
of abstraction that lends itself to the ultimate form-showing, or revealing of forms revealing itself.
In order to make this point, Mies needs to be engaged in a high level of abstraction in order to
maximally show this showing. Of course Mies also privileges essence over form (essence is to do
with being and metaphysics, form with architecture) So a new opposition based half in metaphysics
with something architectural added is the result we could work with. (essence and presence.)
[Dont read out, ask class. Wesensforschung is translated as immanent but wesen is nature or essence and forschung is
research and I am wondering if immanent is the right translation. Immanent means indwelling, and also refers to a
certain ubiquity.]
(3) Mies and Abstraction, Miess practice as abstraction
What emerges from the discussion of Miess thinking of form is the idea of abstraction as the
central issue in discussing Mies which I will develop later in my paper.
Perhaps instead of speaking about Miess philosophy by tracing his influences and reading it is
more useful to think of a Miesian philosophy and speak about Miess practice which would attempt
to think at once his statements about the work and the work itself. As practice Mies is involved in a
high order level of abstraction both making abstract and forming abstraction. His stripping back
of his buildings alongside the consistent stripping back of his own arguments, the disavowal of his
thinking are what I call producing abstraction. Again we can refer to Del Co to support this kind of
argument.
So what are some of Miess abstractions?
(1) Miess statements about the unfinished building seem almost childish. It is something we might
think but wouldnt publish or use as ground for a manifesto. What was Mies thinking? Mies was
not positing an unfinished building but an abstraction, an unfinished conception of form. This is
what he was really after.
(2) Miess aestheticising both the primitive form and modern engineering, the leaf hut and ocean
liner. These are abstractions for the kind of thinking about form that Mies aspired to.
(3) Laugiers, Vitruvian primal hut. Abstraction and type, abstraction and archetype.

(4) Abstraction in what I will designate roughly as Miess presentations of ideas and images.
Neumeyers description of Miess promotion of his Friedrichsstr. skyscraper and Concrete Office
Building:
To the large format drawings corresponded a polemical expressiveness that, by means of a deliberate rejection
of the traditional rhetoric, created the impression of aloofnessthe omission of detail in word and image
augmented their suggestiveness. The generalizing character of Miess texts elevated the statements into an ideal
sphere that sidestepped social problems and fused the realistic and the fantastic very effectively. [italics mine]

The aloofness, the omission, the generalising and idealising character that Neumeyer claims all
point to a certain mode of abstraction that was Mies practice. Abstraction is not to reduce or
eliminate and here Neumeyer helps draw for us this distinction. It is easy to condemn Miess
nothingness, and yet Mies was in search of a positive term but it took the form of a negation
through a series of disavowals which we have discussed already.
(5) Louis Sullivan presented the following argument in 1901 You cannot think in the past, you can
only think of the past. You cannot think in the future, you can only think of the future. But reality is
of, in, by and for the present and the present only. This distinction between of and in is important
for the idea of abstraction. The abstract is that which mediates. It isnt the thing in itself, an
abstraction is by definition not the empirical but that which has a kind of distance. The abstraction
is always of something and here is the contradiction. Mies wanted the presence of something not
present, not presence but presence of.
(6) Neumeyer claims that in spite of that much proclaimed engineering style, there existed an
extraordinary artistic effort. He ascribes certain classical allusions in Miess work as Miess shift
toward the aesthetic. E.g. The grading of the floors in the concrete office building. Neumeyers
conclusion is that Mies did not reject historicism as seemed indicated by his statements which
emphasised construction and materials. But we could argue that classicism is for Mies a means of
still achieving the formless unaestheticised object. The classical lines and inflections are all tools,
and relations which do not think render the building form for the sake of form. But more
importantly if we think of Mies as the abstractor, then classical details show that the abstraction is
not about formal reduction per se as might be thought.
II
1924-1927
Shift in Miess conception of form
(1) Mechanization Spirit
The shift in Miess conception of Form is encapsulated in two statements one he made at the
opening lecture on the Weisenhoffsiedlung where he completely retracts his idea of
industrialisation being the solution; the second about Henry Ford: what Ford wants is simple and
illuminating. His factories show mechanisation in dizzying perfection. We agree with the direction
Ford has taken, but we reject the plane on which he moves. Mechanisation can never be goal, it
must remain means. Means toward a spiritual purpose.

So if we think back to Miess first formulation of form: Miess disavowal of form, which he
retracts, his hatred of what he calls expressionist formalism. Now we see the retraction of
mechanisation which Mies had formerly deferred to. This withdrawal of mechanisation can be
interpreted as a withdrawal of means itself. Mies denies means as the final arbiter Mies peels away
at his own schema term after term.. What Mies is striving for is always given as a kind of derridean
absence, or negative.
[do not read out - What makes Mies a philosopher is not what he takes from philosophers but his own disavowal of
what he has thought, the stock move, to posit and retract. Platos disavowal of knowledge, Wittgensteins reversal of
the tractatus, Heideggers changing permutations of Being which sought always to escape the metaphysical thinking
that he felt even his early work in Being and Time was still subject to, Derridas formulation every text can be
deconstructed, etc this is the modern philosophers work.

So what did Mies replace the 1924 conception of function with? In 1927 in Baukunst und
Zeitwille! Mies expressed that the residential building was derived quite simply to suit its
purpose, namely organizing the activity of living. But for Mies this organising was about ordering
existence and order he said determined the function. Finally order imparts meaning.
This change in Miess position a shift from the materialistic-positivistic to the idealistic and
aesthetic began in 1925 1926. Statements change from the problem of materials to one of
spirituality.
(2) No longer spatially apprehended will of the epoch but the spatial execution of spiritual
decisions. So architecture as will projected into space. Nietzschean theory of art projected as will
Afrikanischestr. Berlin-Wedding 1926
Mies was greatly influenced by Rudolf Schwarz who said that the technical world had great
potential but was afraid of the tendency of the times to become abstractSchwarz saw the true
redemption of man exclusively in spiritual terms
(3) Shift in metaphor
Mies was influenced by Raoul Franc + Siegfried Ebeling Der Raum als Membran 1926 (space as
membrane) theories of biological architecture
Ebeling speaks about the architectonic condition under the elementary circumstances of
biophysical existence and the space of the house as equivalent to a skin or a membrane
between men and exterior space
Neumeyer states that Compared to Miess skin and bone theory that stressed the primacy of
structure, Ebelings theory, viewing the building as a breathing organism, possessed a higher
degree of abstraction
So the shift is from one metaphor or abstraction to another. From the machine or engineering
structure (silos) to the organic or biological structure (plant) This expressed in a nutshell the idea
of a neutral space and architecture as a protective covering that Ebeling had observed in nature and
plant life and dubbed the bark principle (Prinzip Rinde). Architecture as container, ein Raum
ohne Eigen schaften (a room without characteristics). What appealed to Mies about Ebelings book

was his idea of negative space,the neutral, 3-dimensional membrane that exists free of all
alien suggestions, which aligned itself with Miess rejection of all aesthetic speculation, when
he had formerly privileged construction. Neumeyer affirms that Miess skin and bone buildings
could be thought of as negative architecture insofar as they had cast offall traditional
symbolism and historical style. Ebeling provided a way of making concrete Miess idea of antiaesthetic space. Neumeyer adds that Miess criteria of Form-giving remained unclarified. What we
might add is that this deficiency of clarity perhaps is what persists in Miess conception of formgiving and perhaps should not be viewed as a deficit.
The shift from the industrial to the natural is a romantic shift away from the modern to the
natural, the urban to rural which is the conflict described by Jeffrey Herf in Reactionary
Modernism. The requirement for technology and industrialisation coupled with the yearning for an
unindustrialised past. Modern Architects realised that industrialisation was necessary to keep up
with the new conditions of living and yet there lurked a secret longing for the past and a respect for
the arts and crafts heritage they emerged from. Perhaps this mistrust of industrialisation (expressed
in his statement that if we put 1% more effort into improving the quality of bookbinding then we
would be better) This mistrust in the absolute trustworthiness of technology, perhaps leads to a
recourse to nature, which cannot fail us.
In this shift, Mies combines both his interest in origins and the new leitmotif life which is an
offshoot of the idea of Nature. We do not value the result but the starting point of the form-giving
process. It in particular reveals whether form was arrived at from the direction of life or for its own
sake. So now life (not spirit) is supposed to be the ground for form-giving but life as a starting
point. The new building represents as Mies described it in his Stuttgart explanations an element
of the larger struggle for new forms of living - so the arrangement of space around life.
Neumeyer represents Miess conception of life as in organic nature and then cuts to Miess idea of
life as in life style, living style. There is no accounting for this double move in Mies, from the
biological to the social. This kind of cut is something I find particularly distracting in Neumeyer.

From appendix, Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art
Miess statements
1923 Office Building
Development of modern building art away from the aesthetic to the organic
Away from the formal to the constructive.
Skin and bones structures.
1923 Building
We know form only building problems
Anti-formalism
1923 lecture at the Bund Deutscher architekten (on the housing shortage)
Absolute truthfulness, no formal cheating
Organisation of living arrangements give absolute priority
Illustrations of an Indian tent, a leaf hunt, and Eskimo house, a snow hut, summer tent of an
Eskimo, castle of the counts of flanders and ghent, farm complex, and others.
(nothing worth showing of the day)
1924 Baukunst und Zeitwille (Building Art and the Will of the Epoch)
He give examples like ancient Rome and how the builders were anonymous but the city was the
will of the epoch not of individuals.
The building is always the spatially apprehended will of the epoch
1924 Industrial Building
The industrialisation of building constitutes the core problem of our time. If we are successful in
carrying out this industrialisation then the social economic technical and even artistic questions will
solve themselves.
1924 lecture
Mechanization can never be a goal, it must remain means. Means towards a spiritual purpose.
What happened in 1925?
1926 Lecture
Building art is always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions, that it is tied to its times and can
only manifest itself in addressing vital tasks with the means of its own time.
Structure of our period is fundamentally different from that of earlier epochs. This applies to both
its spiritual and its material conditions
Bbuilding is not the realisation of specific formal problems. But it is always, the spatial execution
of spiritual decisions.
1927 Letter to Die Form (very amusing)
Regarding the New volume
A request that Mr. Riesler change the name of the journal
form is not the aim but the result of the form-giving process
Do we not guides the attention away from the essential?
On Form in Architecture
Only life intensity has form intensity

We value not the result but the starting point of the form giving process. This in particular reveals
whether form was derived from life or for its own sake.
1927 Foreword to the Official Catalog of the Stuttgart Werkbund Exhibition Die Wohnung (the
dwelling)
Rationalisation and typification are only the means they must never be the goal. The problem of the
new housing is basically a spiritual problem, and the struggle for new housing is only an element of
the larger struggle for new forms of living.
1927 Foreword to bau and Wohnung (Building and housing)
freedom (no brief as such)
1927 Concerning My Block
The increasing differentiation of our housing needs, however, demands on the other side an ever
greater freedom of usage. In the future it will become necessary to do justice to both claims. For
this purpose the skeleton structure is the most suitable system of construction. It makes a rational
production possible and yet permits total freedom of disposition in the interior.